Introducing 800s

I just finished Week 4 of Galloway's "Half-Marathon for Time Goal" program--which included my first round of 800-meter runs. From here on out, every other Saturday includes an ever-increasing number of 800m runs, while the other Saturdays are focused on building distance. It's hard to say which one I like better. I do like the change of pace (literally) of incorporating short bursts of half-mile runs, and it's nice that the entire workout is over faster than a long run...but towards the end of each 800m I'm begging for mercy. (PS when you do speed work on the Monon, you feel ridiculous, because everyone else is doing steady-state cardio. I'm sure they were all wondering why I would come zooming up behind them only to stop and pant.)

Galloway has a formula to help you calculate what your 800m time should be: take your intended mile time for the race, cut it in half, then subtract 15 seconds. An 8:30 pace would be a stretch goal for me, so I tried to keep all my 800s at 4:00. I was successful until the last one, which was closer to 4:10. This isn't supposed to be an all-out sprint, but definitely something fast enough to challenge your body and make you need a rest interval.

Here's how the break-down works (always starting with a light 10-min warm-up):

-Run 400m (.25 miles)
-Walk for 10-30 seconds
-Run the 2nd 400m
-Walk for 2:30-3:00.
-Repeat for as many rounds as what the training program calls for on that date.

Since this was the first time I had done this workout, I stayed on the conservative side and used the full 30 second and 3:00 walk breaks. (So, when I said that my 800m times were 4:00, that includes the :30 of walking.)

This week called for 4 x 800. If you do the math by looking above, that was only a 25-minute workout. I would venture to say that I was almost as exhausted as my hour runs. The next day I was sore in way different spots than normal...my hip flexors (which is always the case when I work on speed) and my ABS! Thus proving that running is one of the best total body workouts ever.

The program builds up to 12 x 800 on Week 12. Woof!!